Here Lies
by CBK1000
Summary: Tick tick tick tick. This is your hummingbird heart in your chest, winding down toward eternity.


**A/N: When I originally came up with the idea for this standalone, I had no intention of posting it. I've been to two funerals in as many years, the most recent just a couple of months ago, and so the subject of death and the entire process of mortality has been on my mind a lot lately, as morbid as that sounds. I also have lost two grandparents to cancer, and since grief is something I am not very good at exploring in real life, being something of an emotional stoic, I decided to use my writing to come to terms with it. This was something written for me, to try and iron out all the little kinks in my feelings, a sort of cheap therapy, if you will. However, halfway through it I decided it might be helpful for me to share this publicly, since going through those deaths was something I never really talked to anyone about, not even my own family. Even so, while this piece was more for me than anything, I hope you get something out of it too.**

**Dedication: To everyone who has fought the good fight and lost, but especially to Grandpa M. and Grandma B. I don't believe in God, but I hope you did end up somewhere better after all.**

He's always been a cougher. Sorta' goes hand-in-hand with bein' a smoker, y'know: little wheeze, little hack, little 'Yo, Elena, what're ya' talkin' about- I'm _Reno_, baby- I can even make hacking up a lung sound sexy' and it's all good.

Sit back down, shuffle out another cig: _brrp-click_, and you're all set to go.

Except when he coughs now, his hand pulls away red.

* * *

><p>His diagnosis is a whirlpool. There's a man in a white coat holding a clipboard spewing terminology like 'malignant' and 'small cell carcinoma' and somethin' about survival rates he's not listening to anyway.<p>

He's a Turk, baby- just bein' here now says piss on all those statistics anyway.

Except there's this little pit in the center of his stomach, chewing away at him like a rat.

Gettin' hit with the C-bomb is this coldly unfolding certainty inside your chest, little ice-bleeding hooks that leak winter through your whole body, your heart and lungs and legs, numb wood-block lumps on the exam table underneath you.

You're gonna' die. You _know _this.

You will always know this, weeks and months and years into remission, into tentative 'all clear' predictions that do not thaw your heart or lungs or legs, because it's all _bull shit_.

It's comin' back to get you in the end.

He swings down off the table with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips, and an eyeblink of a reach puts another cig in his hand; he tips a little half-flirtatious wink and shoulders a shrug because _relax_, doc.

Ain't gonna' make any difference now, right?

* * *

><p>The first order of business is getting hammered. Then the suckin' an' the fuckin'- see, he's got this all worked out. Knows exactly how he's gonna' spend his last few months.<p>

Except he passes the whole night in the company chopper with his hands on the controls and that unlit cig still dangling from his mouth, and he _wants to know why_. Not a whole lotta' sense in askin' really- he knows who he is and what he's done and how many children he's killed and widows he's spawned- but ya' know…he always thought it was gonna' be a bullet, or a knife, somethin' fast and impersonal, just another punk doin' his job, just like him.

Maybe a chick he didn't call.

But not this…this _shit_ masticating him layer by layer until he is all skeleton, until his leanness is all knife-edged angles of brittle emaciation like that bag o' bones slum rat he's still trying to forget, thirteen years later.

He is almost but not quite sure he can feel it growing inside him.

He brings one hand shaking toward his chest, and his fingertips strum little whispers of faltering exploration across knots of pectoral that crumble into ash underneath his touch-

That's all in his head, yo.

But y'know, one day it's not going to be.

One day there is going to be nothing in his head. One day all of him is going to be these cinders he keeps seeing flake away underneath the ragged-gnawed crescents of his fingernails- ashes to fuckin' ashes, yo- and somewhere ShinRa'll erect a plain little monument in his name that maybe Rude and Elena and a couple a' the rest of them will visit once a year.

Here lies Reno the Turk. Now There Was a Man Who Knew How To Use His EMR.

If you've ever really thought about death- _really _fuckin' thought about it, not just wondered if there's a better place and are you gonna' see your sweet little granny again and that sorta' shit- it goes something like this:

It's dark. It's a whole motherfuckin' galactic _smear _of dark, and there is no sight or scent or touch, and your hand claws for that cigarette you know you left in your jacket pocket and the lighter in your pants, except they're not there anymore.

And neither is the hand you stretch groping toward this cigarette you know is supposed to be there.

And when you open your mouth to scream, when you cough up a little rasp that shivers like a fuckin' shadow from your vocal cords suddenly it's all _shit_- you don't have a fuckin' mouth anymore, you don't have fuckin' _vocal cords_- what _the hell is happening_-

Beyond you, there is a world still going on.

High above Edge, sunrise paints artist's swirls of red and peach and titian into the sky, and once upon a time you used to look up at this sky and think about how it's a little like the cherry on the end of your cigarette, sometimes.

There's no sky where you are now.

There's no sky and no arctic sting of raindrop on your playfully flicking tongue and all that pollution smoke boiling up into your raw red-streaming eyes is just _gone_-

Never thought you'd miss it, yo.

You ever thought about that sorta' death before? Where there's a world and a hole and that hole's the little niche you carved out for yourself, that hole's an empty desk and a discarded name plate and a cleared-out locker and Rude that little sentimental fuck sitting alone at a bar, watchin' those tits all by himself-

He's going to miss those tits.

He spits his cigarette into his hand and spends a very long time looking at it.

Cream blending into gold. Faint tobacco whiff that's as eternal as the nicotine stains on his fingers, aged-paper yellow.

Lotta' trouble, for such a little thing.

He wonders what he's going to miss most.

Boobs and booze and chicks with no names or inhibitions or self-respect-

This is what he tells himself.

It's not the truth, though.

He's going to miss Rude's sunglasses. It's just…they're always _there_, y'know? He's got a million of them, tucked into pockets and briefcases and side table magazine holders, and there's just so much _shit _goin' on behind them that sometimes he lets Reno see when no one else gets to, because they're partners and they're always going to have each other's backs, and that cueball motherfucker is the best friend he's ever fuckin' _had_, ya' know?

He's never told him that. He's never told him that and, yo, maybe it's time now and all, with this thing inside him eatin' away his lungs and shit, but how's a guy gonna' hang onto his reputation, making weepy proclamations like that? How's a guy supposed to look his best friend in the eye and say all calm-like 'yo I'm dyin' so how's about a hug for the road, partner?'

Maybe he won't say anything. Maybe his cough will turn into a phlegm wad of red-tinged sputum one day, and next thing you know he's looking down at half his lung in his palm, liver-spotted black like the slum skyline over his head back when he was just Reno the slum rat and not Reno the Turk. Maybe he'll fold over all nice n' easy into Rude's arms mid-mission, and he'll get to die being held by someone who loves him, he'll sink smiling into that galactic smear of dark with the cigarette that's not there and the hand that doesn't exist reaching for it, and he'll go out with the big guy's tears on his cheeks-

His smile is a harsh little half-twist of a thing.

Rude's not gonna' cry and Elena'll probably get his desk- it's bigger anyway; she oughta' be happy about that- and y'know, it's the suit that comes first, not the men and women behind it, and he's never been all that careful with his anyway.

Just because he's reckless doesn't mean he doesn't care, yeah? You get used to the suit eventually- not the tie, though, never the tie- because it's not about the _suit_, man, not for him.

It's about the family he didn't get, the one ShinRa offered a starving fifteen-year-old bum thirteen years ago, the one he'd never had before because his mother was a whore or an addict or somethin' like that and no one could afford another mouth to feed, so for as long as he can even remember, he's always been alone and wandering and hungry, gettin' by on stealing and fucking and being goddamned _fast_: it's the fast or the dead, in the slums.

He needs them and they do not need him and he has always known this, but it still hurts, it _hurts_, knowing they're not gonna' care-

He slides open the door and flicks his cig spiraling out the side, to splinter somewhere down below in a greasy footprint smudge of motor oil, and for a very long time he sits with his hands on his knees, seeing nothing.

* * *

><p>Here's the ironic thing about dying: you gotta' get on with your life.<p>

Ever try to live, when your clock's winding down, when each slide of your foot and shift of your eyes is a minute hand tick, echoic cave acoustics reminders sending ripples through your brain- _tick tock reno thought ya' were gonna' beat me didn't ya' but nothin' gets by ol' death_-

And y'know…funniest thing is, there used to be a little part of him that always assumed he was gonna' live forever. You're young, you're drunk, and look at that, shit happens, got two chicks next to you in a bed you don't recognize and fuck it man, just go with it because you're a Turk and you're gonna' live pedal to the floor, no rearview mirror or anything.

And then one day you wake up and the noose is around your neck and you can feel it tightening tightening tightening, and maybe your feet flail little flipper kicks of protest, maybe you've got a knife to that shit because _fuck you, death_, it's not time yet-

But cut one strand loose, and there's another one waiting to take its place.

And suddenly you're just tired, y'know?

Suddenly you start leaving bars alone and staying out all night on your balcony just to see the sun come up, because you don't know how many you've got left.

Try and do anything, and not think about how many you got left in ya'. Go on an' try it. Laugh loudly, yo- got nothing to laugh about when you're a hole in the ground and some fresh meat for the maggots.

'Nother thing to think about, while you're at it: the maggots.

Gonna' chew you up good, down in that hole with no sunrise or cigarette or hand or mouth, little insectile wriggles through the dirt nibbling away at your eyes and lips and ears-

He starts smiling more.

He knows this, because Rude comments on it, but funny thing is, the guy does it with one hand on his shoulder, all conciliatory, like these wrapping-paper smiles concealing all the shit he's not gonna' let people see are peeling away and he's showing everything anyway, all his cards on the table and a vacantly amateur bluff on his face.

Does he want to talk about something?

He flicks his lighter and tongues his cigarette back and forth and he pastes another smile on his face, because, really, what else are ya' gonna' do?

Can't stop the train with a pinky.

* * *

><p>Seventh Heaven is almost empty.<p>

He likes to come here sometimes, because that blonde twat just grunts and glares a little at him, and all the rest of 'em like to react with varying degrees of friendliness somewhere between aloof and murderous, but she's always got a smile for him_- I remember you yo- _and it's a nice smile.

Got no teeth in it, but he likes it better that way- makes it all soft around the edges, like she's not interested in chewing him up and spitting him out; he's already _getting _all eaten up, yo-

He'd just like a little goddamned coddling, now.

She slides his favorite across the counter with a flourish- whiskey on the rocks, easy on the rocks- and tonight he stares down at it like it's the first time he's ever seen it, and out of the corner of one eye, he sees her pause with one rag-wrapped hand fisted on her hip.

"You ok?"

He squints down into his drink. Amber-beaded condensation spots like freckles of constellations in the sky he spent his whole walk looking up at. Sharp little finger poke to the nostrils, when you swirl the glass clinking underneath your nose-

It's the little stuff, ya' see.

A sunset's just a sunset, until it might be the last one you ever get to see, and then suddenly it's a masterpiece bleeding out into the clouds, spreading little slanting stripes of rose trickling across your shoes.

The shoes, too. Gray wear patches and faded strawberry birthmarks of old bloodstains, layered in slum dust. He's killed men in these shoes, gotten laid in these shoes, and he has briefly, spectacularly, fallen in love in these shoes.

They are the only things he brought with him from the slums, these shining hand-waxed loafers he stole from a client whose throat he slit in an alleyway behind a dive, when the fucker tried to get too rough with him- he said a little _rough_, yo, none of that autoeroticism shit-

The shoes came before the girl. Pretty rag-clad little thing all smeared in pollution smog with mottled heliotrope fist prints of bruise like a necklace around her throat; they had a secret spot, see, and maybe neither of them had all that much left to give up anymore, but whatever was left they offered shyly up to the other, and he used to hold her at night and talk about a future he pretended they were going to have.

Hooker knifed her in that same alleyway for a fingernail-sized lump of street-quality Materia, all cut with who the fuck knew what.

She didn't talk much, cradled there in his lap, bubbling little wheezes of fluid-filled pleas.

But forget that.

He has.

He's tried to, anyway. And most nights, he's successful enough. Get enough booze and tobacco and slut cooze in your face and you can muffle most anything, yo. How do you think he lives with himself after pushing that button? Just 'cause it's his job doesn't mean it doesn't keep him awake at night with his hands folded behind his head and his eyes hunting for meaning in ripples and dips of creamy popcorn-studded ceiling slope, layered in night-shadow. He ain't gonna' lie though: bothers him less than it probably should, most nights.

Stamp down on your conscience often enough, and eventually it's all just shapeless flat eternity taking up space inside of you, saying nothing.

And y'know, not like those AVALANCHE rats didn't deserve it, except for Tits here, of course, for two gigantically obvious reasons.

"Reno?"

He sets his elbows down on the wiped-clean countertop and fingers the pack in his jacket that he has not opened since purchasing it from a little smoke shop in downtown Edge three days ago, and he looks up at her with a little wrinkle of frown line between his brows, and for just a moment, he has a fleeting little wisp of a thought that goes like this:

All the sensations in front of and around and inside of him are all countdowns that spin him closer to the edge, this man to his left slurring a joke to the man on his right and the swirled wood-grain of the counter underneath his fingertips and the clock on the wall above her head, tick tick ticking down the final hours minutes seconds of his life, until they are all one long thumb-smudged smear: hoursminuteseconds, and the little counters inside his head roll over another slot and the hourglass spills sand between his fingers like water he stupidly tries to palm-

Here's what the world sounds like, when you're dying:

His hummingbird heart in his chest and the respirator hiss of his breath in his lungs and they're not just inhalations or pulse thumps anymore: they're T-minus 1000, blastoff in three, two, one hold onto your shorts, kids, you're in for a ride-

Only the point is, he is counting down to nothing, and his ride is over.

But the colors are pretty.

Shitty romances would have him believe the world is just one big shiny package waiting to be opened after falling in love; sky's brighter, purples brighten into indigo-washed violets and it's not just the grass on the other side that's greener, but the whole world in all its spring-blushing glory, emerald tidal ripples beneath his feet.

He doesn't buy any of this; he's been in love before, remember?

It's death that grants you this whole new perspective, this fish-eye view of a world that's not quite put together right anymore, kaleidoscopic and too-bright like you're nursing a ten-tequila hangover and you forgot to put your damn sunglasses on before stepping outside-

So now this wood beneath his fingertips that used to be just beer-stained wood cutting up the pads of his thumbs with a couple of splinters is a collage of sandpaper knots and marble-slick maintenance all jumbled up together, little bone-hard knobs of imperfections and silk-skein tributaries of black-cherry auburn, reflecting light through all the layers of mahogany.

The guy to his left is wearing a grease-smeared red shirt with a tear in the left sleeve, only it's not just red, it's this hematic throb underneath the lampglow trickling down from overhead, bright as his hair. And the drunk to his right's got a head full of gray-dipped brown and a drumskin rigidity to his cheeks that is painfully artificial, a geezer trying to hold onto his youth with both hands white-fisted around it the way Reno's been clinging to his mortality, without even realizing it.

It's just all the little shit, ya' know?

Never know how much you're missing, until it's all about to slide out from underneath your feet.

And now he lifts his head and he shrugs his shoulders up out of their slouch and for once he's looking into her eyes, and his voice is a long careful drawl, when he speaks at last:

"If you were dying, what would you do?"

He can see her taking him seriously- it's why he asked her in the first place, because he knew she would, and he waits with his hand around that pack and the other on his thigh, balled up tight.

He coils it in around itself like that, so she cannot see it shaking, so the men to either side of him and the one behind him cannot notice it either- but most of all, he winds it up all meticulously thumb-tucked and pinky-clenched to pretend to himself that it is perfectly fine and steady and still.

She leans her elbows down on the countertop across from him, and between her brows the skin rumples together in a little ninety-degree L of thought line. "I'd do something I'd never done before, with someone I loved."

He thinks a lot about this, on his way home.

In the central square, a child crouches with something across her knees, and when she stands it catches the light finger-tickle of breeze across his cheeks and in the sky above him unfurls something star-patterned and blue and speckled in sun-stain.

He stops to watch it with his hands in his pockets.

Updrafts of wind send it rippling toward scudding lemon-mottled clouds, and the child on the ground twitches a little wrist flick of feedback through the line that veers it in a wingtip spiral to the right-

And yo, whadaya' know; he feels the smile on that kid's face ghost across his own, and for just a moment the warmth in the air leaks into his chest, and around his heart relax little iron bands of fist clench, cold as the stiff blood-bled hand around his pack.

He's never flown a kite before.

* * *

><p>Rude thinks he's nuts, but he's out here 7:00 sharp all the same, and the sunrise is late today, because there's just a faint hint of rose-glow on the horizon that spills blood lazily slithering down rubble peaks in the distance.<p>

He's laughing when the thing snaps out of his hand and spreads its wings and it's a little like flying a chopper, y'know- all airfoil freedom and mountains and little puckered humps of hills as far as the eye can see, and when the back draft hits his face he closes his eyes and tips back his head and flies by feel, and inside his shoes his feet give little phantom flickers of pedal graze.

His toes curl around frayed tongues of insole coming apart around the edges.

He's never going to have to turn these shoes in to be re-built again.

For a long time Rude says nothing, standing with his arms crossed and those silent sentinels of sepia-tinged glass throwing sun-scatter, and around them swirl skeletons of leaves the wind churns into whirlpools.

He wants to know if Reno wants to talk about something.

He keeps his eyes shut and he feels the sun on his face and the strings in his hands and the cigarettes in his pocket and the clots in his lungs, building toward a crescendo that will hunch him hacking at the waist later.

For a very long time, he says nothing.

Rude does not know that the sky is a slightly warmer tone of peach today, that radial spokes of finger-width pink are going to turn it into orange-glazed salmon five minutes from now, by his count. He is not going to notice it touch the rubble mounds in the distance and light them all up like pyrotechnics, for just one eyeblink of a moment, because it's all an eyeblink, in the end- this moment between them and the civilization under his feet and the heart in his chest tick tick ticking its way toward eternity.

"Give her a try, partner," he says, and he passes the kite off with a smile and a head tilt, and behind him his ponytail catches breeze and flaps like the colorful children's toy in Rude's massive callus-thickened hand.

The silence between them is nice. One day it'll be empty, but for now he is still here filling all the arcs of stillness in the distance between their shoulders with long smooth inhalations that pump his chest and fill his throat and maybe that little fuckin' rat is back in his gut chewin' away like the maggots that are gonna' come for him when he's a Reno-sized hole in the ground gathering moss, but for now he pops his neck and cracks his back and he ignores it.

For now the spreading cherry stain on the horizon and Rude's brief bleach-flash of neatly-aligned smile is enough.

* * *

><p>Wednesday after work they visit the church and with Rude perched on a wood-slatted pew he stretches out at his partner's feet and he stares up through splintered gaps in the roof like tooth-missing slots of gum, fringed black around the edges.<p>

"Whadaya' think the Lifestream's like? For the bad people, I mean?"

Rude tilts a silently inquisitive nod toward his head that slip his glasses half an inch down his nose, and he says nothing until he pokes them back into place. "You are not 'bad people', Reno."

"That's not what I asked, yo. I ain't one a' the good guys, though, that's for sure. Not sure I'd wanna' have my mind blown apart and all joined up with everyone else in that thing, anyway; blah, blah, blah, you know they never stop talkin' and with my luck I'd get the old ladies who wanna' gossip about everything and did they tell me about their six cats back in Edge and that one time they found a hair in their pie- _that's _real purgatory, if you ask me."

There's a crack in his smile that reaches all the way down into his chest and he thinks he feels that terminal little lump give a heartbeat twitch that brings bile surging up his throat and tears to his eyes, and Rude, man, he doesn't _wanna' _die, help a guy out here-

He's good at masks- woulda' made a real good actor, if life hadn't dropped him on ShinRa's doorstep- and he molds one into place like a sculptor rounding off all the angles, and go on an' look for a hitch or a hiccup or a hesitation in his voice now, 'cuz ya' ain't gonna' find it. "Like that one time I filled Elena's locker with all those Chocobo chicks and they crapped all over the place- nag nag nag, that's what it's gonna' be like." He flaps his hands in the air as he talks, fingers to thumb like sock puppet jaw-hinge, filling the silence before it can fill him.

All he's ever gonna' be is silence one day. Thunderous white-noise in the background while Edge and Rude and Elena and Tseng and all the rest of them go on without him and he's never been afraid to ask anything before, but suddenly his breath in his throat is a little white-knuckled fist on his tongue and it's swimming through all this molasses to get to his lips, because suddenly he cannot say anything at all.

Is Rude gonna' miss him? Are any of them gonna' miss him? When they look up every morning expectin' to see that flaming torch of a hairdo slouch through the doorway and there's just a little fuzzy halo of a memory shaped like his shirt gaping at the neck and his smile tilted at just the right angle, are they gonna' look at each other and say 'Man, I miss that guy, you remember the time when he…?'

He freezes the smile on his face when it begins to fracture around the edges, and when Rude says nothing he starts talking again because the silence isn't nice anymore, it's ugly and waiting and so much goddamned _louder_ than it's supposed to be.

Hours later when he stretches out on his bed like he did across those flowers the ceiling above his head twists into exhaustion-smeared lines that drip shadow-ink, and it's the same color as the puddle in his hand when a cough that tears everything inside him shoots him upright at the waist, wheezing.

He unfolds his palm around that little red oil slick, and he fumbles his hand shaking over one side of the bed to wipe it off.

It joins eight little slash marks before it, roman numerals in groups of dry paint-flaking fives, and he thinks the tenth mark is going to be his last.

He folds his hands over his stomach and a doubled-up pillow behind his head and he does not sleep, because he will miss the sunrise.

* * *

><p>How would she want to be remembered- this is the question he wants to ask her, but does not.<p>

'Cuz the thing is, what he wants is not of consequence anymore. Ask the people in sector seven how he's gonna' be remembered. That silence ain't awe-struck approval, babe.

That silence is a thousand laughing children, all simultaneously wiped from existence with one casual thumb flick of a decision he can never take back, and somehow that one echoic click is louder than all their screams.

He thinks about them a lot, you know, those children.

Doesn't mean he wouldn't do it all over again. When he's on the clock he's on the clock and sorry about that, yo, but ShinRa pays the bills and he ain't gonna' piss off the boss man just 'cause he's gonna' hear those brats all crying out for him to _think _about it, just for one motherfuckin' second _think _about what he's doing please, have a _heart_- well, don't worry, kiddos, because funny thing is, someone's pushin' the button on him now.

See, thing is everyone gets their shot and some people run with it and others blow it and still others watch it smoke quietly out underneath their feet in a crackle of heel-squashed paper and hand-rolled tobacco, but the really important thing- yo listen up kids gather 'round close 'kay Uncle Reno's got a story for you- the really, really fuckin' important thing is that everyone runs outta' time one day and there's no re-wind or re-start and at the end of the day you're just gonna' have to live with everything you did and didn't and wanted to and couldn't.

So make it count.

Make it count, he thinks as he counts the stripes on his bed and the clots in his toilet.

* * *

><p>Tick tock, goes the clock and his heart in his chest and his breath between his lips and the blood that slides in thick syrup-sticky strands over his fingers.<p>

It's a Tuesday when he adds the last mark in a careful diagonal little gash across that second group of four, and from this angle on the floor where he has collapsed they smile back at him like fish-gill flaps of throat slit.

He slides his PHS from his pocket and hits the one without looking, because he does not have to, because his fingers know this route and the voice in his ear and the warmth in his heart, and the smile on his lips paints the carpet underneath him red.

"Yo, Rude."

And he just talks, ya' know? He just talks, with his partner interjecting a little grunt here and a comment there and he's blatherin' on about nothin' and the clock's winding down, the sand's running faster and faster down his wrists and out through his fingers and it's like catching water, tryin' to hold onto it, and there's a low-battery beep in his ear and another cough in his throat and yo, Rude man?

Let the boss know he's not gonna' be in today. Drinks at Seventh Heaven on him tonight.

He pretends he's got a tonight, and another sunrise like the one outside his window.

A copper-weighted blink tears the crust from his eyes and he wants to know how he got blood all the way up there, but y'know, it doesn't matter anymore, _nothing _matters anymore, get it, and there's a little freedom in that somewhere, even if he's not real appreciative of it right now.

He hangs up without a good-bye as his PHS gives a final beep-beep-beep warning and dies in his hand.

Funny thing, poetic irony.

* * *

><p>One last funny thing- the human body's got this little alarm clock, and when time is up, it <em>knows<em>: _beeeep _goes the bell, only it's not time to wake up anymore-

He shoulda' known not to take the 'copter out today. Spent all morning on his hands and knees over the toilet, vomiting blood and getting sweat and snot and tears all over himself-

Yeah, big tough motherfuckin' Turk, cryin' about the same shit he's been handing out for years.

Death's all around us, baby.

Sometimes you just gotta' step up to the edge of the cliff and let the wind carry you over the side.

The sky's a smear of blood over his head like the smudges of handprints on his controls, and a breath brings more of the shit bubbling up across his lips and the hand he brings slanting up toward his goggles is almost too slippery to hang onto them, but when they snap into place he feels _complete_, yo, and the rotors above his head slice _whump whump whumps _of white noise shivering through the air like the swish of blood in his lungs and the rattle of oxygen in his nostrils, going thinner.

Lotta' sayings floating around out there about time, but this is the one he likes best:

Time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.

And y'know, it's all white water, and it's gonna' hurtle you screaming over the edge eventually, so tuck in your arms and fold your chin down onto your chest and better goddamned hold on tight, fuckers-

You're gonna' be teetering on this same precipice he can feel trembling away beneath his toes into chunks that clack tumbling down the side, and here's the thing: you can put it off for years and years and years if you're lucky, but one day you're gonna' be the rock and that flow's gonna' slop you out over the side, and suddenly now it's you who's the discarded name plate and the empty desk and the cleaned-out locker.

Suddenly it's your best friend alone in a bar somewhere, waiting to celebrate this tonight you're never gonna' have.

So chew on that for a while, cuz he's got enough fuel in this chopper to take him a long way on autopilot, and he takes his hands off the controls and brings them up in a knot behind his head, and the sky's a blinding solar flare in his eyes that he doesn't mind at all.

He's glad it's a sunrise and not set- kinda' nice to think he's heading into a beginning and not an end, ya' know?

Maybe think of it the same way yourself one day, if ya' believe in that sort of thing.

**A/N: I am not entirely sure where this quote about time originated. I found it on the internet, but could not find a source, so if anyone does know, please tell me so I can properly credit it. Just know that this line does not belong to me.**


End file.
